ELECTION '96.

Dole's Goal: Party Unity

Buoyed By His Primary Sweep, The Senator Now Faces The Problem Of Making Room For Pat Buchanan.

NEW YORK — After weeks of primary campaign warfare within the Republican Party, likely nominee Bob Dole now faces the dual challenge of making the party his own while creating room for Pat Buchanan, the man who seemed most determined to keep Dole from his goal.

The primary election Thursday in New York, a state where the Republican politics and mechanics were tailored to a Dole candidacy by political boss Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, almost becomes an afterthought as Dole works to unify the party in the face of Buchanan's renewed pledge to stay in the race.

Even though New York offers the biggest prize yet in the GOP presidential contest, Dole no longer needs it as much as he did before he swept the fat collection of primaries that were held Tuesday. Ever since those results became certain, the face of the contest for the Republican nomination changed sharply.

Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar dropped out Wednesday, finally receiving a message voters had been sending since the Iowa caucuses. Steve Forbes picked up the endorsement of former congressman and Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, a Republican icon and fellow flat-taxer, and settled in to spend even more of his millions on a campaign that offers virtually no prospects for victory.

Even though Dole could probably do some coasting at this point, he was on the campaign trail Wednesday. In Houston, he made some important connections that will play out next week on Super Tuesday as Texas and a collection of other states, mostly Southern, hold their primaries.

Dole picked up a couple of endorsements and near endorsements, the near one from the man who was his campaign-trail nemesis only a few elections ago, former President George Bush, and a warm embrace from the former president's son, George, who is governor of Texas.

The former president didn't actually give Dole a formal endorsement, saying he wanted to wait until the Kansas senator actually had the nomination in hand, which requires the collection of 996 convention delegates.

But that reluctance almost seemed silly as the Dole campaign stage-managed the event so that the press corps could watch as Bush did everything but hop on the bandwagon.

"You'd never know it, but I'm staying neutral in the primaries, at least for the next few days," the former president said. He said he would be happy to campaign for Dole, and Dole said he would be happy to accept the former president's help.

The younger Bush also had withheld his support for Dole until it became apparent with Tuesday's results that the Senate majority leader had gathered enough of the cherished "big Mo," or momentum, as the elder Bush called it, to carry him all the way to the nomination.

Dole's biggest problem, Buchanan, was still out on the campaign trail, thumping the podium and blasting away.

At this point, Buchanan is in a position to make the 1996 Republicans look something like the 1988 Democrats, whose nominee, Michael Dukakis, spent a lot of time trying to answer the question, "What does Jesse (Jackson) want?"

Just as Jackson found a way to tap the base of the Democratic Party's support, Buchanan has reached out to an unusual collection of interest groups that might make up as much as 30 percent of the GOP's primary electorate--too big a group to be ignored as the general election campaign begins.

The challenge for Dole is to decide how much attention he should pay to Buchanan and his issues, and what kind of attention he should pay.

The options range all the way from a sharp kick in the behind to a warm embrace, depending on what message Dole feels he must send.

One thing the Kansas senator is not likely to be worrying about, though, is New York.

So certain is the Empire State's Republican organization of its chosen candidate that state party chairman William Powers this week boasted, without apparent fear of raising unattainable expectations, that Dole would win all of the 93 delegates at stake.

Nine more delegates, selected by party officials, essentially already are his.

And that was even before Dole's clean sweep of Tuesday's eight presidential primaries.

"Dole has got a very nicely baked cake right now, and he's going to get some nice icing on it Thursday," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.

Forbes is the only competitor on the ballot statewide with Dole. Barring a major upset, the New York primary now seems sure to certify Dole's position as the putative nominee, just as it did for Bill Clinton in the 1992 Democratic contest.

Most independent polls of Republican voters give Dole a commanding lead. The most recent, published Wednesday in the New York Post, put Dole ahead by 29 percentage points.

Forbes and Buchanan generally show up in a tight race for second place. Buchanan appears on the ballot in only 23 of the state's 31 congressional districts; in a rally Tuesday, he asked his supporters in other districts to cast votes for Forbes.